Snapshots of law, gender and sexuality news from the past couple of weeks.

The Human Trafficking and Exploitation Bill (NI)

Sarah Thin, Durham University

On the 20th of October, the Northern Irish Assembly passed the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Bill, a controversial new law which purportedly seeks to combat human trafficking and sexual exploitation by, inter alia, criminalising the act of paying for sexual services. It is likely to become law by mid-2015. By targeting the buyer as opposed to the seller (a novel approach within the UK), the proposals aim to recreate the supposed success of the ‘Swedish model’, the idea behind which is to reduce demand within the sex trade thereby reducing levels of sex trafficking.

There has been heavy criticism of the proposals: a survey of sex workers has found that 98% of them oppose the proposals and 61% believe the new law would make them less safe. Many argue that the Swedish model ‘strips women of their agency and autonomy’ by criminalising the consensual buying and selling of sex, has increased the stigmatisation of sex workers, and its success appears to have been greatly exaggerated. While no-one would deny that human trafficking is a major problem in today’s society, claims that the majority of sex workers in Northern Ireland are victims of trafficking have been shown to be unfounded, and many believe the plans will simply force the sex trade further underground, making it even more difficult to combat the issue and provide support to victims. These proposals, while presumably well-meaning, conflate the two separate issues of trafficking and consensual sex work and are likely to be at best ineffective, most likely very harmful. We must hope that the new campaign for a similar law in England meets with a more considered approach.

A Two-Day Symposium: Thursday 18th – Friday 19th September 2014

In December 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down three provisions of the Canadian Criminal Code, holding that they violate sex workers’ constitutional right to security of the person, and gave the Canadian Parliament one year to come up with new legislation, should it decide to do so. This landmark decision marked the first successful human rights challenge to the criminalisation of sex workers.

The conference will bring together academics, practitioners and activists from Canada and the UK, to think about the impact of the Bedford v Canada case in Canada, how it might provide lessons to the UK, and what human rights and a human rights challenge might look like for sex workers in the UK.

We welcome papers from academics, sex workers and activists and are open to alternative forms of presentation.

Key Speakers:

Maggie O’ Neill (Durham University)

John Lowman (Simon Fraser University)

Nick Mai (London Metropolitan University)

Niki Adams and Laura Watson (English Collective of Prostitutes)

Rosie Campbell (Genesis)

Georgina Perry (Open Doors)

Jenn Clamen (Stella)

Amy Lebovitch (SPOC; plaintiff in Bedford v Canada)

Also showing ‘Normal’ – a film on migrant sex work by Professor Nick Mai

Eithne Crow is a London-based queer migrant sex worker and tweets at @eithne_crow. This post was originally published on Eithne’s blog and is reposted here with permission and thanks.

I should probably say straight up that if you’re here and reading this article, I’m assuming you’re down with the notion that people should be able to do whatever they want with their own bodies, familiar with the notion of sex work as work, and at least in theory supportive of sex workers organising for their labour rights and decriminalisation.

You can 100% be on-board with these ideas, and also be opposed to trafficking. There is absolutely nothing about being pro-sex worker than makes you pro-trafficking (quite the opposite, in fact). If you are pro people doing things consensually with their own bodies for their own benefit, it follows that you can be correspondingly opposed to people being forced to do things with their bodies for someone else’s benefit, since it gets in the way of the consensual part, and the part where they benefit from the things they consent to doing. We could get into complex conversations about poverty and whether anyone really ‘consents’ to work within a capitalist system — and I am 100% down to talk about this — but it needs to be a conversation about work in its entirety, and not focused on sex work as an exceptional case. We’re not comparing the coercion that is capitalism to the coercion that is being held against your will and abused. There is a world of difference, and we need to respect that difference in order to respect survivors of abuse.

Aoife McKenna is a PhD student researching the sociology of health enhancement at The University of Edinburgh. She is currently based at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. Aoife blogs about her research at Pangur Bán. The Brazilian debate coincides with increased calls for reform of the law relating to prostitution in England and Wales.

‘The question of voice – of who speaks, and who speaks in the name of whom – is a crucial issue for this debate, and for democracy in general’ – Sonia Corrêa

‘Everything that exists, but is illegal, creates a mafia’ – Gabriela Leite

Now is undoubtedly a fascinating and crucial time for those interested in the law and human rights in Brazil. The rapid social, political, and economic changes of the past few years have instigated corresponding changes in civil society, as citizens react to, and interact with, the forces that are shaping the future of their lives and nation. Interesting discussions around citizenship and social justice have been raised – for example, recently introduced laws that aim to criminalise prejudice with a view to protecting minority groups.

Part of this wider discussion on citizenship and rights could be seen on 7th November in Rio de Janeiro, when The Brazilian Lawyers Organisation hosted a debate – ’A prostituição na reforma do Código Penal’ – regarding the ongoing reform of the Criminal Code and the proposal (PL 4211/2012) that is currently before Brazil’s Congress. Proposed by Federal Deputy Jean Wyllys in July 2012, this proposal would alter the criminal laws surrounding adult prostitution to allow prostitution businesses and cooperatives, and makes a clear distinction between “prostitution” and “sexual exploitation”.

An interdisciplinary conference for postgraduate and early-career academics in the area of law, gender and sexuality

Friday 30 March 2012

School of Law, University of Westminster, London, UK

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Law mediates various power structures and is interwoven with numerous other knowledges that participate in the construction, normalization and regulation of bodies, such as medicine, social media, religion and the nation-state. Numerous feminist legal scholars have commented on law’s intimate relationship to, for example, medical discourses, arguing that the shape of legal power has changed to more regulatory and disciplinary forms. Inevitably law’s relationship to bodies/states of embodiment alters as it takes on these increasingly pervasive roles. One might conclude that the notion of a space where the law will not intervene is a liberal fantasy, out of step with the reality of law’s operations. How, then, should law be evaluated and/or harnessed?

Our interdisciplinary one-day workshop aims to cover these and other issues pertaining to law and the body.